2. What makes for an effective online and blended learning model? What opportunities should be available to help instructors learn effective practices in design and delivery of online and blended courses? What experiences should be provided to faculty to effectively teach online and blended courses? How can you develop a community of online and blended practitioners on campus?What makes for an effective online course?
Synchronous intro to course.

(Please make sure to give your group a name and use that name as a heading when you insert your summary of your conversations.)

Group X:

Carole's group:
Can’t just take classroom course and put it online.

Need to establish social presence of faculty. Group activities to engage students. Engage on a higher level. Stimulate critical thinking. Must have thought provoking questions for discussion board. Students are more comfortable sharing ideas on a discussion board because they have time to prepare answer, be more thoughtful. Good way to get all students to contribute – students who are shy, students who are from different cultures, no one monopolizes the discussion.

What opportunities should be available to help instructors? Faculty have to be comfortable with the technology. Must have a good technology department that can support faculty understand the necessary technology, and be available to faculty if there is a meltdown while the course is running.
Encourage faculty to use technology in the classroom, so that they can see how it works. Ask to students how they would like to see us use computers. Direct energy that students direct towards computers towards educational endeavors.
How can you develop a community of practitioners? Need someone coordinating all online courses, perhaps through center for teaching and learning. Not only help with course design, but be there to help throughout the course. Have everyone who is teaching an online course get together monthly to get together for a discussion of best practices. Have a discussion board for faculty where they can talk to each other about issues with their courses. Have courses offered with a shared format, which makes it easier for technological assistance.
Educate faculty about how h students learn. This has changed as technology has become more available, and there is so much information at their fingertips. Also, there are differences in learning styles of adults.

Right Corner Group

  • Celebrate success-video stories, pictures on website, blogs…ect.
  • Teaching academy for online teaching. Cohort model with a group faculty.
  • Putting F2F workshops online.


GROUP - Front Left Table
Speaker: Jennifer

  • Mandatory training for LMS; 12-hours for preparing to teach and course design. Meet with instructional designer. Stipend offered. Teach them to fish!
  • 25-hour course - Certification for OL Teaching and Course Development; instructor-led but self-paced. Somewhat of a cohort and people come and go. ISD is always in the course monitoring the progress and communication.
  • Online Instructor TEC Certification - 3 asynchronous courses (technology, effectiveness, content). One course is paced and taught by an “instructor:”
  • Short courses - 20-25 people from different disciplines immersed in the online environment; many examples of how things can be done; Not mandatory so self-select into the courses.
  • Demand and need for online courses is driving the opportunities.
  • IDesign (Paradise Valley CC) - Models the LMS and online experience for them
    • Initial assessment of skills assessment
    • Course Design (Hybrid) - 6 hour workshop with homework
    • Preparing to Teach (Hybrid) - 6 hour workshop with homework
    • Instructional Tools
    • Mandatory 2 hour LMS transition training
  • Discourage development around textbooks and publisher materials; scalability.
  • Faculty do not realize the time investment when developing a course. Minimum is 8 hours but probably more like 200 hours.

Back of the Room

Speaker: Sandra
Experiences for faculty

  • Baby steps – structure process, outline
  • Mentoring
  • Examples – access to great courses
  • Modeling good pedagogy in all PD for faculty
  • Have an online course that they can take
  • Self paced online learning



Creating a community:

  • Use the LMS to build an online community
  • Monthly meeting – online and blended teaching group – need a core group
  • Weekly contact from a facilitator – tidbits, pedagogy, tech tools
  • Build a CoP in the LMS
  • How to share content -
  • Has to be really easy to do
  • Reward mechanism drives the decision – reward collaboration

Traillblazers:
  • peer review
    • annual review of instructors
  • online forums
  • instructor resources - online "break room" in D2L (Columbia College)
  • teaching the same course vs teaching many/varied courses
  • "faculty development workshops" - awarded trips to campus for workshop attendance
  • training - online and in person training